Talent competitions have likely been around since prehistoric times when high status was conveyed on that one individual who could throw a rock further or with greater accuracy, or hit two stones together in a rhythm better than anyone else.
For years talent competitions have showcased athletes, marksman, gamers, students, and emerging artists, to name a few. More recently, television programs such as American Idol have provided enhanced audience participation by allowing audience votes to help determine the winner.
Computer networks such as the Internet offer the potential for even greater participation in talent competitions. Chacker, U.S. Pat. No. 6,578,008 incorporated herein by reference discloses an online system for recruiting talent utilizing the uploading of performances from the competitors and public voting.
Online contests among the consuming public have been popular where the public can try to select a winner prior to the winner being revealed. Online games such as online fantasy football as realized for example on CBS Sportsline (found at www.sportsline.com) further engage the consuming public to attempt to select the most successful players during a season of a sport such as professional football presented by the National Football League (NFL) and award points to the consumers based on the actual weekly performances of NFL players.
The Internet has been found to be a rich resource for advertising goods and services due in large part to the ability to identify and track the behavior of online consumers in great detail. Thus, drawing online consumers to a particular website for targeted advertising is a frequent goal of online merchants. One way to draw online consumers is by providing unique entertainment content. Although the entertainment content can be similar to a television program, providing the content online sets the stage for reaping the benefits of online interactivity and advertising.
Thus many web sites have taken to generating original online content to entice online consumers to visit their site. One such web site is the YouTube site available at www.youtube.com. YouTube Original Channels service offers new broadcast-quality content 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for any number of topics.
There is a need for an online system which provides both enhanced feedback, greater involvement, and/or entertainment of consuming public viewers over prior systems and methods.
The instant invention results from an attempt to further improve the entertainment and greater involvement of viewers of online competitions.